Sunday, 25 June 2017

I read two very interesting papers from adaptation and vulnerability research last week.

In Operationalizing longitudinal approaches to climate change vulnerability assessment, Fawcett et al. (2017) make a case for longitudinal methodological approaches when studying vulnerability and adaptation. The lack of attention paid to temporality has been a long-held peeve of mine (it's gotten so bad that in team meetings, colleagues crack jokes about it). Fawcett et al. use three illustrative cases from Arctic communities to highlight how longitudinal approaches, two in particular — cohort studies (following a group of individuals over time) and trend studies (repeated data collected at a community level to reveal patterns of change) — can strengthen the methodological toolbox of vulnerability research.

I particularly liked how they tease out the benefits of using a longitudinal approach. It helps

build a more nuanced understanding of adaptation processes and 'causal chains' of vulnerability (something Jesse Ribot has written a lot about, see his work from 1995, 2010, and 2014),

construct a more robust portrayal of what has worked and hasn't, and why, which is crucial for anyone interesting in strengthening, investing in, and implementing adaptation, and

diagnose maladaptive behaviour by looking into past pathways. This last approach is similar to what colleagues and I have taken in a recent project where we use cases from rural and urban India to argue that tracing historical trajectories of development and adaptation actions can help understand how development choices can narrow adaptation option spaces, often leading to potential maladaptation.

Coming back to Fawcett et al. (2017), I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and wholly support their key argument of expanding vulnerability research to involve more longitudinal approaches that begin to capture temporality. While the authors discuss the challenges in doing such research (notably, potential attrition of respondents from original cohorts, the need for sustained funding), I have two questions probing the practice of longitudinal vulnerability assessment approaches:

The political economy of vulnerability assessments: Currently, many NGOs, donors, and governments conduct VAs. How do the authors imagine such actors to undertake longitudinal studies given the budgets, project cycle-time frames, and capacity constraints they work under? This is especially true in government departments in India (we did a review of 120 VAs in India found 35% use static, indicator-based approaches). Moreover, in many cases, governments undertake VAs under tight deadlines (for e.g. assessments after a disaster event to inform humanitarian action). The underlying question is how can we build processes and demand for longitudinal vulnerability assessment approaches that feed into shorter-term cycles but also contribute to the larger narratives of vulnerability?

The place of researchers: Researchers are a possible 'actor group' that don't face all the challenges noted above, or at least not to a similar extent. However, researchers are increasingly being squeezed into shorter project cycles, insecure employment arrangements, tighter funding structures, and greater calls for impact — all of which, may not necessarily be conducive to longitudinal research design which needs 1) sustained financial backing, 2) strong, clear and continual leadership, 3) an underlying recognition of the importance of such work, 4) acceptance of delayed gratification.

In Adaptive capacity: exploring the research frontier, Mortreux and Barnett (2017) discuss the emphasis that adaptation research has on quantified assessments of adaptive capacity (predominantly through Sustainable Livelihoods Framework-based (SLF) approaches) without an equal emphasis on how and to what extent adaptive capacity translates in adaptation outcomes. They highlight valuable gaps in adaptation research, most notably, the lack of focus on the process of adaptive capacity (a potential to adapt) being translated into an adaptation outcome (with concrete implications for peoples' vulnerability). The paper reviews emerging literature on risk perception and adaptation decision-making, cognitive barriers to adaptive behaviour, and place attachment, to discuss how these gaps can be addressed.

To add to their review of literature from disaster risk management and behavioural sciences, I wanted to highlight a few empirical studies exploring the drivers of adaptation behaviour and adaptation outcomes:

Drawing on data examining household and intra-household risk perceptions and decisions in rainfed farming families in north-west India, I have argued that different households perceive risk differently and this shapes the adaptation pathways they take. Moreover, I found that adaptation outcomes (measured through environmental, social and economic lenses) change over time based on changing household assets but also changing social structures, policy regimes, and cultural beliefs.

In a completely different context, Evans et al. (2016) examine social limits to adaptation int he Great Barrier Reef region.They argue that social limits affect adaptation outcomes by dissuading people to take up adaptive action in the first place! Also interactions between psycho-social (or what I call socio-cognitive) and structural factors can adaptation ineffective.

Conceptually, it's exciting times for adaptation research. Practically, I feel that while there is a growing body of work around understanding the need for longitudinal vulnerability assessments and factoring in socio-cognitive barriers to adaptation, it hasn't begun to filter into mainstream adaptation implementation and negligibly in policy circles (especially in India, the context I am most familiar with).

Sunday, 26 February 2017

If I were to choose one word to define my research, it would not be climate change or adaptation, it would actually be livelihoods. Livelihoods. How people earn a living; a process, a strategy that goes much beyond a 'job' or income source', a negotiation that people and families make to live, and meet their physical needs and, if you're lucky, aspirations as well.

"Livelihoods are understood not only in terms of income earning but a much wider range of activities, such as gaining and retaining access to resources and opportunities, dealing with risk, negotiating social relationships within the household and managing social networks and institutions within communities and the city." Beall and Kanji (1999:1)

Until a few years ago, I was working exclusively on rural livelihoods. How households deal with climatic risks (among other things) and what livelihood pathways they take. The rural development literature has had a relatively long engagement with the idea of livelihoods: from here comes the now-common lexicon of sustainable livelihoods and five livelihood capitals (Scoones, 1998; 2009), livelihood diversification and risk spreading (Ellis, 1998), and multiple discussions on methods to study livelihoods (Murray, 2001; McLean, 2015).

"A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base." Carney (1998:4).

More recently, when I began examining livelihoods spanning the rural-peri-urban-urban continuum, the literature has seemed less developed. Urban livelihoods differ from rural livelihoods in their nature, range of opportunities and earning possibilities, as well as entry criteria. Constructs common in rural research such as 'community', 'common pool resources', 'village leaders and elites', take on different meanings and forms in the urban. The slum leader may double up as labour contractor and (illegal) water provider. Lines of gender, caste and class remain but they take on different forms and confer different agency in the urban. Even defining a household becomes tricky (Beall and Kanji, 1999). Interrogating all of this from a livelihoods approach requires a lexicon that moves away from agriculture and allied sectors towards spaces such as factory floors and street vending, domestic work and call centres. That moves away from discussions around landholding sizes and livelihood portfolios towards encounters of choices and aspirations with globalisation and sharp class differences.

And so, over the past year, I have been documenting urban livelihoods across India using the the hashtag #UrbanLivelihoods. So far I've covered Delhi, Lucknow, Bangalore, and Mathura to create a photo repository of the diverse activities people undertake in our messy, hard-to-define, and ever-changing urban spaces. It is a tentative foray into the range of livelihoods one encounters in the urban. And so I have captured the fodder sellers of Vrindavan who are part of a tourism industry that feeds on the 'holy cow'. The agarbatti rollers in Bangalore's pete area. The singhara seller in Lucknow, and the Nepali house maid in Delhi.